Dream of the Rude
by Guile
Summary: Aedan Aeducan, Gray Warden, is not having a good time during his first, and only, trip into the Fade.
1. Chapter 1

The Aeducan-made-Warden looked around. It was a building, kind of church-like, a familiar sort of place. Like he'd been here before. Something was off, but he just couldn't quite put his finger on it… there had been a demon, and then… nothing? But that thought was put on hold when he recognized the fellow on the raised dias.

He stared at a familiar bearded human of his acquaintance. There might have been some open-mouthed gaping, actually.

"_Duncan_? How the hell are you-?"

He made the logical connection. "Am I dead? If that demon slit my throat while I was napping, I'm going to be pissed. So much left undone… I haven't even manage to get into Morrigan's almost-nonexistent pants yet."

Well, sort of logical. He was having an off day.

"No," Duncan assured him gently.

"I mean, and this is not the afterlife I was promised. 'Return to the Stone,' shyeah right. Not that that sounds like much of a promised reward, but - oh, hey, is this one of Alistair's jokes? Did he put you up to this? Not funny -"

"No, this isn't a joke," Duncan said, exasperation getting through his warm, caring facade. "The war's over. We won."

"Now, see, I don't remember that part at all," Aedan Aeducan protested.

"You're the big hero."

"That _does_ sound like me, I guess…" the dwarf allowed, scratching his beard.

"Things are perfect and they shall be that way forever! Now that the darkspawn are dead, there is only one thing we need to do. We," Duncan went on, "the ancient and mighty Order of the Gray Wardens, shall sing songs about how great everything is now and how much less awesome things were in the past."

"Okay, okay, that's it. I have to cry foul on this one. Whoever-you-are, have you ever even _met_ Duncan? He had his moments, but the man was a hard-ass of epic proportions." Of course, Aedan had wanted to be a Gray Warden anyway, since most of his nobles had been far more annoying, and far less amazing in battle to make up for it.

"Do you think I _wanted_ to be one of the premier warriors in the whole country and the last, best hope against the Blight? No!" 'Duncan' went on melodramatically, "All I really wanted was to be a bard!"

"Look, if you're not going to take this seriously, I'm leaving," Aedan huffed.

"I can't let you do that, dwarf," 'Duncan' declared.

Aedan spun around and lashed out with a chain mail-reinforced, full-strength punch at dwarf height. He'd discovered all kinds of useful tricks up on the surface.

'Duncan' went down, almost crying. Whatever the imposter was, it was apparently not immune to a cheap shot to the stones, the dwarf noted.

"Hey!" complained mook number 1. "I thought dwarves were supposed to be big on honor and fairness and all that crap!"

Aedan was busy putting an arrow in the writhing Duncan from point blank range. He looked up.

"Oh, sure. We dwarves are _all about_ honor. Just not against demons. Or darkspawn…. Or humans. Really, we're just honorable to other dwarves." He thought back to his younger brother's plan to commit fratricide and pin the blame on him, sentencing him to what amounted to a slow execution in the Deep Roads. One of these days, he'd have to go back and kill him for that. It was on his To-Do list, right after 'Save Ferelden.' "And not always that much."

"A shame, that," Aedan mused as he put an arrow through the whiner's eye. "Ah well. Now where was that door?"

Well, the glowing pedestal thing apparently did the job, transporting him to some other place, alone with another human. It was a place much more obviously _wrong_ than Duncan's building had been. It was like the land was cut off, sectioned, separated from everything else by a wall of fog.

Aedan was ready to nut him.

Niall spoke very quickly. "Woah, hold on! I'm not one of the demons!"

"Hey, I remember you! Well, your body lying on the floor like a dead thing at the feet of a greater demon." He paused. "You know, that afterlife theory is just getting more credible all the time."

Niall went on with his backstory exposition, ignoring him. "The demon traps all who come here in dreams they cannot escape from. I have been wandering this nightmare realm for a lifetime, finding only mad dream things and rivers of flame, locked doors and non-Euclidian geometry. It controls this section of the Fade utterly -"

Aedan waved his arms. "Wait, wait, wait. This is the Fade? How did I get here?"

"Were you listening at all?" Niall said, exasperated, "The Sloth Demon -"

"Yeah, I meant, how did _I_ get here? I'm a dwarf. Not being able to touch the Fade is kind of our thing. Well, that and these bitchin' beards." He stroked his beard comfortingly, reminding himself of its presence on his face.

"I don't know, I'm a mage, not a… a…"

"Person who studies the Fade and related subjects amidst the greatest repository of magical knowledge in the country?"

"Y- no… Moving right along, my companions and I were heading to the Harrowing Chamber with the Litany of Adralla to assail Urdred."

Aedan noted in passing, "I'm going to kill the hell out of that guy for sticking me in this stupid place with only you for company. And for releasing the demons and blood mages into the Tower, I guess."

"That's… one way to put it. Anyway, blah blah Litany blah blah Urdred big words talky talky guardian demons are you even listening?"

The Aeducan exile started paying attention again. "Sure. Kill demons, free comrades, Litany of Adralla, you betcha."

"Well, okay then."

"You maybe wanna come help me get us out of here, or…?"

"No," whats-his-face said dramatically, "I've tried for so long without success, I just don't think I could -"

"Fine, whatever. By the Stone, you're a downer."

A little further down the only path that cut through the eerie void and beyond a spooky portal thing, he found a Rage Demon locked in an epic struggle with… a mouse.

It was fairly large, as mice went, but that was about it. It was a mildly retarded-looking fight.

"Help!" said the mouse.

Aeducan shrugged and pulled out his bow. He'd heard weirder.. well… okay, not really, even Duncan's 'Hey, drink this demon blood or I'll kill you' pitch was less weird. But he liked demons less than mice, so he was okay with it.

When the demon was dead, the mouse said, "You couldn't have come, like, three seconds sooner? Jerk. Anyway, take my power. I shan't be needing it. Now, I die! Blargh!"

The mouse practically exploded, more blood than such a small thing should have puddling around it.

He blinked. "Well, thanks, I guess, weird talking mouse. I'm sure the ability to turn into a plague-bearing rodent that can't even handle a lesser Rage Demon will come in handy _all_ the time…"

He looked around, but there was no ghostly portal or glowing pedestal or other exit… but there was a mouse hole.

"Huh. That's fairly convenient."

He also noticed in passing that he was talking to himself.

"Bugger. It starts with talking to yourself, then before you know it, I'll be as mad as a human."

The mouse hole spit him back out in a different place, so he wandered around fighting lesser demons until he found himself standing before Niall again.

"Hi Niall. Found that mouse guy. He's dead now. I'm going to go see what else is out there."

"You are so much braver than I," Niall marveled.

"Yeah, I'm great. Bye, Niall." Aedan didn't want to spend more time in this place than he absolutely had to, and certainly not with the whiny human mage. He was getting out of here if he had to kill everyone in this dream world to do it.

* * *

He touched a pedestal and moved between areas, a very peculiar feeling indeed. He was getting a sense of how big this area of the Fade was. The Fade was supposed to be huge beyond measuring, but this place probably didn't have more than half a dozen of these sectioned off little lands to it.

He didn't know magic, so he had no idea how to escape. Better to just find that demon and murder him. Indiscriminate murder was always a good plan B, when it wasn't his plan A to begin with.

This new place looked like the site of a huge battle in a succession of samey stone corridors. There was no ceiling, just a pale sun in a fog-yellow sky.

Pretty soon he was up to his eyeballs in darkspawn, big armored hulks with a mean disposition only matched by that rank odor. The little ones fell easily enough, but those bigger ones required more than one arrow to put down unless it was a damn lucky one.

He missed his human shield. That was, his fellow Gray Warden and friend Alistair, he corrected himself, as if worried the other Warden happened to be nearby, reading his mind.

Before long he had waded through enough Genlocks and Hurlocks to put paid to a small village of the things.

"Talk about dreams imitating life," he sighed.

He called days like this Mondays. Followed shortly by Demon Tuesdays and Brigand Wednesdays.

Eventually he found another human hiding behind a pillar from more darkspawn. He was whispering, "Must be quiet! Shh! They won't find us!"

The last true Aeducan resolved to get out of this place as quickly as possible. He did _not_ want to be that guy, mumbling to himself and rocking back and forth.

"You know, darkspawn do have ears. They can probably hear you just fine," he pointed out.

He noticed that both the human and the darkspawn were kind of pale and see-through, but they died all the same.

He really did love violence. It solved so many of his problems.

"You saved us! You killed them, you did!" The fellow looked normal enough now, covered in one of those heavy suits of mail the Templars liked to wear.

Aedan preened a bit. There had been far too little adulation in his life since he was exiled from Orzammar.

"I give you my wisdom! And now, I wake!"

The knight vanished.

Aedan blinked stupidly at where the knight had been. "You can _wake up_? Then what the hell am I still _doing_ here?"

He looked around surreptitiously. No one around. Good.

He moved over to where the knight had stood, and intoned, "And now, I wake!"

Gave it a few second, just to see if anything was going to happen.

"Well, damn it."

* * *

A/N: So, first chapter of a two, maybe three-parter, written mostly just to address a few weird bits in the canon, and because it amused me. Tried my hand at the tongue-in-cheek style of Sarah1281, whose Dragon Age dwarf origin stuff is worth a look.


	2. Chapter 2

Okay, the easy way out was a bust, but he still had a new power to try out.

He shot up and acquired an almost skeletal thinness instead of his usual stocky frame, muscle stretched tight over bone and covered in a cloth wrap that was uncomfortably similar to a dress. And he felt… wrinkled, somehow. So okay, he wouldn't be winning any beauty pageants, but could it fight?

He felt around metaphysically, trying to figure out what felt right. He had some nasty claws, maybe that was it. He floated one way, then the other. Whatever he was now, it was certainly not built for speed.

Then he rounded a corner and there was a Hurlock bearing down on him, sharp hunk of metal held ready at shoulder height to cleave him in two. He instinctively froze it into a solid block of ice with pure will.

"What? That was amazing!" he cheered. He poked the Hurlock ice sculpture with one long claw and it shattered.

But he wasn't done yet; he was quickly getting the hang of what this Spirit form could do. There was an archer who had stood back and was busily trying to fill him with arrows. He pointed at the Genlock archer, who stopped moving. Frozen in time, like a bug trapped in amber.

He discovered that his new magic could also be turned to healing him, and within seconds he was as good as new.

Then the archer fell over, dead.

"Fantastic. Is this what being a mage is like? I really got the short end of the race stick."

It took him a bit longer to get to the next pedestal since he had to float leisurely along, but it beat the hell out of the alternatives. He might just live in this form from now on.

After a scene change by way of pedestal, he opened the door in front of him and flaming dogs leaped for his throat. And they had fiery Templar backup for some reason.

"Well," he was forced to admit as he narrowly avoided fire-wreathed jaws, "I was complaining about the sameness a minute ago. I probably deserve this. You'd think I'd learn to stop tempting the gods by now." He wasn't sure he believed in Andraste and the humans' Creator, but he figured there had to be _someone_ out there raining shit on him. And his Ancestors probably wouldn't screw with him like this.

Following this conversation with himself was a whole lot of animal abuse, but they were probably evil animals or dream animals or figments of his imagination or something so they probably didn't count. He slashed them apart with his claws, destroyed them with his magics.

Just to be on the safe side, he decided not to mention this part to Leliana or Alistair when he saw them again. They'd just give him disappointed looks again. Morrigan might enjoy the story, though.

Fire was everywhere, and the fiery animals were too, but liberal use of ice magic saw him through the gauntlet. Round and round he went, seeking a way out. A vacation home this was not.

After a thankfully short trip through the fiery tower, he encountered a single Templar who didn't seem to be immediately hostile.

He was talking to himself, though. "Must... control… anger.. But it burns! It burns so!"

"Uh… on second thought, I don't think I want to get to know you after all," Aedan decided, taking a step back. "I think I'm just going to go around-"

The Templar caught fire like everything else here did. In retrospect, Aedan supposed he should have been able to call that one.

Hindsight. Bah.

The fiery Templar hurled himself at Aedan. He was very swift on his feet, and probably quite deadly. A few Ice Grasp spells sorted him out.

"Anger… fading. Madness… gone. Self-narration… ending. I am free!" the Templar cheered.

"That's… that's good," Aedan acknowledged. He wanted the crazy man to leave. Most Templars were crazy to one extent or another, he'd found, but at least most of them didn't wear their crazy on their sleeve like this guy.

"Take Rhagos' power. Burn him! Burn them all! Burn it all to the ground! Hehehehehe…"

Aedan took a _long_ step backward.

"Find other dreamers, other powers. Find Sloth, and end him!" And like the first dreamer, the fiery Templar vanished.

Weirdo. "That pyromaniac is right, Sloth," the Aeducan swore. "You will be very sorry you made me go through all this. Oh yes… very sorry indeed. But first, let's see what this new form does."

He activated the Burning Man form, sliding the form on like an old, slightly uncomfortable suit, eagerly anticipating discovering his new powers. He, also rather predictably, caught fire.

"Eyagh! I'm burning, burning forever, yet I can't die! Who thought this was a good idea? I mean, what's the point? Am I supposed to give out flaming hugs, or what?"

He got out of that form in a hurry. You just don't appreciate what it feels like to not be on fire, until you are. "I'll just stick to the one with phenomenal magical powers, thanks."

The next section of the Fade - Aedan briefly wondered if this was an insidious plot on the demon's part to bore him into submission - seemed to contain priests, golems and maddened mages in equal measure, with a few abominations and other assorted monsters for spice. Though luckily the mages seemed more intent on murdering each other than him.

He wasn't sure why the priests of Andraste were as bloodthirsty as everything else here, but it wasn't like the mystical dream world had to make sense or anything. Maybe it was a metaphor for something.

A man who looked a bit like Niall, Aedan discovered, was another of the dreamers. "It is time for this dream to come to an end!" he announced melodramatically. "I give you my power; free us all from this nightmare!"

Where the others had vanished, presumably waking up from the dream, the robed human merely turned around and walked off.

"Are you sure you don't want to _help_ me free us all, end the nightmare, etcetera -" he called, but the human was gone.

Aedan grumbled, "What, do I smell or something? Who does no one ever want to join my group?"

Well, there was still his band back in proper reality. Six of them with murderous impulses to one degree or another, three with religious manias and daddy issues, all on a doomed quest to save Ferelden, the surface of which he didn't care for and containing a large variety of people who annoyed the hell out of him or wanted him dead. His dog was okay, though. And they were still a better bunch than remaining here, that was for sure.

He activated the new form. He grew in size and stature with dizzying speed until he reached heights usually reserved for Qunari and golems. Strength poured into his limbs. Rock armored him. He was big, and he was mean, and he was protected from everything that might harm him by a rocky shell. He felt like he could run forever, tear trees from the earth and crush his enemies beneath his big stompy feet like ants. He was a dwarf-run juggernaut! He began to move in an easy lope. Whatever got in his way - doors, enemies - got crushed under hurled rocks or rocky fists.

No wonder Shale was always in such a good mood after a battle, he reflected. When you were this size, everything was just so damn crushable.

Before he knew it, he had bashed his way to an exit. Some inner sense told him that he was nearing the end. Find his allies, stomp on that Sloth demon's head, and get back to ... whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. He'd been in here so long he was having a hard time remembering. Whatever, crush first, he'd figure it out later.

A/N: Two months for a bare 1500 words. Ah well. One more chapter to go, the first half of which is already written.


End file.
